All posts by yuga

I knew variable ND filters were immensely useful since you could continuously shoot at the optimum aperture without the need of changing the filters according to the situations. I, however, had never used any variable ND filters that satisfied me in terms of image quality. Variable ND filters I knew could not reduce the light entering into the lens evenly, resulting in poor image quality.

This unevenness is called the X effect as the darker part creates an X-like shape. NiSi claimed that they completely eliminated the X effect with their new ND filter, ND-VARIO Pro Nano. So I decided to give it a try. As usual, I chose the bigger one, 82mm, so that I could use it with most of my glasses. The available filter thread sizes are 67mm, 72mm, 77mm, 82mm and 95mm.

When I opened the box and checked the product, First thing I noticed was the good built quality. After toying it for a while, I also noticed that it rotated very smoothly. As the name suggested, it seemed like a real professional tool.

Firstly, you’d need an ND filter when you use a very fast prime lens during the daytime and shoot at wide open apertures. I like using my Sigma 35mm f/1.4 with the Panasonic GH5 via the Metabones Nikon G to Micro Four Thirds Speed Booster XL 0.64x. This speed booster changes the focal length of the lens 0.64x shorter, that is, 35mm becomes 24mm (48mm in full frame equivalent), while boosting the aperture from f/1.4 to f/0.9. The lowest settable ISO of the GH5 is 100 and the shortest exposure time is 1/8000 sec., which means, if you wanna shoot at f/0.9 during the daytime, you’d need an ND filter.

Secondly when you want to use a flashlight during the daytime outdoors particularly when shooting backlit. The variable ND comes in handy as flashlights can’t sync with the camera when the exposure time is too short. The fastest sync speed is typically about 1/250 sec. You usually want to use the shortest available shutter speed (such as 1/250 sec.) to avoid motion blur or hand shakes but you wan to control the depth of field too. A good variable ND filter comes in very handy in such a case as it lets you shoot at desirable shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings.

The third case is where you take a long exposure shot. I often use an ND filter when shooting waterfalls to extend the exposure time to capture the smooth water flow. I used the NiSi ND-VARIO to take the picture of the Kegon Waterfalls in Nikko shown above.

I often combine the NiSi ND VARIO PRO with an ND1000/3.0 (10 stops) filter at sunset or sunrise. As the brightness changes quite rapidly at dawn or dusk, the NiSi ND VARIO PRO comes in handy. I sometimes take experimental shots at dawn or dusk. For example, when I shoot a long exposure shot at dusk, I set the NiSi ND VARIO PRO to the max at the beginning of the exposure and gradually move the knob to set it to the minimum at the end of the exposure, that way, I can capture the light more evenly when taking a long exposure shot during the twilight.

4. Videos
At last but not least, the VARIO ND PRO comes in super handy when shooting videos during the daytime. If you shoot videos often and your camera doesn’t feature internal variable ND filters, you’d need a good variable ND filter. This is because, if the exposure time is too short, say 1/400 sec, any moving element appears unnaturally in videos. Ideally you set the shutter speed to double the frame rate, that is, 1/60 sec when shooting at 30fps to capture motion blur necessary for smooth footage.

I shoot videos quite often these days with my Panasonic GH5. When I shoot videos during the daytime, I always use the NiSi ND VARIO Pro. I shot the video shown below at the same exposure setting (1/60 sec. shutter speed) and rotated the knob of the NiSi VARIO PRO ND filter to adjust the exposure. As you see in the video, the transition is very smooth and it reduces the incoming light evenly without causing the X effect problem.

A good variable ND filter is more preferable than using just one ND filter and unwillingly narrowing down the aperture to get an optimal shutter speed or using multiple ND filters and having to busily change them according to the scene or depth of field you want. You will never regret your purchase if you shoot videos often.

Effects on the ColorOK. The product seems pretty good but how about the color cast? Does it change the color at all? If it does, how does it change the color? Someone asked something like that so I’m now quickly adding this part. Unfortunately it’s cloudy today so I didn’t go down to the lakeshroe to shoot Fuji. I took a tree in the yard instead. I shot these example shots with my Nikon D800E paired with the Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR in Aperture Priority Mode. Note that the brightness of each photograph is slightly different because the camera can only set it in 1/3EV steps.

The color changes slightly when using the NiSi Vario ND Pro but the change isn’t necessarily adverse one. In the above examples, some people may prefer the color of the photographs taken using the NiSi Vario. Anyway, it can easily be corrected in the post processing.

SharpnessI also checked if the NiSi ND-VARIO affects sharpness. Let me show you the 100% crops extracted from the above 3 shots.

No NDNiSi ND VARIO Minimum (1.5stops)NiSi ND VARIO Maximum (5 stops)

The camera slightly moved when I attached the NiSi ND Vario. As you can see, there is no negative effects whatsoever as far as judging from these photographs.

Bottom lineI find this product super useful and can recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who needs an ND filter. I recommend you to get the ND VARIO with bigger filter thread than that of your go-to lens and use it with step-up rings. When you buy step-up rings, be sure to get ones with knurled sides as you need to change them at times. If they are not knurled you often find it is difficult to remove the rings.

Because the NiSi ND VARIO is always attached to the lens when shooting videos during the daytime and you cannot use it with the lens hood, it is subject to scratches or damage. I hope NiSi will provide some kind of filter cap or cover for protection. That’s my only request.

I re-invented a new photographing technique. The technique is new in the digital domain but, in fact, the phenomenon itself was known since the early era of digital photography.

I don’t remember the name of the camera but I heard that digital cameras could not capture colours before the Bayer filter was invented so you had to take three shots—one for red, one for green and one for blue—and then they were merged into one photograph. However, if there was moving elements such as clouds, waves, cars, pedestrians, cats in the picture, you get unnatural colours.

Although people tried to avoid this effect to capture natural photographs, I thought it would be interesting to create such colours on purpose as a new way of artistic expression, and so I devised this technique. Let me tell you how to do it in details.

To do this, obviously you need a tripod. Fix your camera on the tripod and take three shots. To get radical effects, the exposure time should be long and there should be some time gaps between each shot. But I use three shots taken in a row as example:

As you see, they’re almost identical except for the clouds and water. I export them from Light Room to Photo Shop as layers.

Once they’ve been imported into Photo Shop, you open the Color Channel to use only R, G and B channel of each shot.

Specifically, for the first shot, set the Red to 100% and Green and Blue to 0%, for the second shot, set Green to 100% and Red and Blue to 0%, and for the third shot set Blue to 100% and Red and Green to 0%.

Then merge them by setting the opacity of the first shot to 33% and the second shot to 50%, Then, flatten the image and hit Command (CTRL) + S. The resulting image is imported back to Light Room.

The brightness of the image will be darker because only one of the three colour channels is used in each shot so I adjusted the image.

The resulting image is like this. You see moving elements became iridescent colour.

I created the following images using this technique. They’re currently exhibited at Island Gallery in Tokyo. The exhibition is going to end on Feb 26.

Many friends advised me to not show how to do it but I’d rather want to see how other people use this technique. So I uploaded this post. Good luck with exploring your creativity.

P.S. After uploading this post, someone kindly let me know that some people used a similar technique back in the days of film cameras. So I replaced the word “invent” with “re-invent.” They typically captured waterfalls with shorter exposure time using colour filters to get sparkling effects.

P.S. (2) I came back from Tokyo and now can access my photos in my HDD. So I upload some more examples that demonstrate the effects of this technique better.

I’m having my third solo exhibition at Island Gallery in Tokyo. It is located near the Tokyo Station Yaesu Exit. Visit the gallery to see my works printed on the finest paper. I’m at the gallery all the time during the period. See you at the gallery =)

I hope you’re having a good one. Here’s my Christmas presents for you. Wallpapers for your smart phones. All photos are vertical and in 1080 x 1920 (16:9) format. You can download them and use them as a wallpaper but you may not upload or print the photos.

See you again next year. I promise I’ll update the website more often in 2017.

On the 11th June, I visited the Pola Museum of Art. This museum was opened in 2002 but I hadn’t known its existence until a couple of months ago. Tsuneshi Suzuki had been the former president of the Pola Corporation, one of the Japanese cosmetics giants. He passed away in year 2000, and the museum inherited his collection of art and antiques.

The museum’s collection was impressive. I mean, it couldn’t be compared to the collections of the Metropolitan or the Louvre. But it was a very impressive collection for a private art museum in Japan. The museum had a good number of Western modern paintings such as Renoir and Monet and French Art Nouveau glassworks and oriental ceramics. I really liked the works by Emile Gallé and Daum Brothers.

I visited the museum on Saturday. Surprisingly enough, the place wasn’t too crowded. The most famous piece of art work housed in this museum is probably Girl in a Lace Hatby Renoir. Thankfully, I could ‘monopolise’ it for several minutes without being bothered or interfered by anyone. I personally prefer to keep some distance from a painting to see it as a whole but that simply wasn’t possible in crowded museums because someone would surely get in the way.

Jakuchu Ito is my favourite traditional Japanese painter. A big exhibition had been held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno to commemorate his 300th birthday. It began on 22nd April, which happened to be my mum’s death anniversary. After visiting my parents’ grave in Kawaguchi in the afternoon, I called at the museum on my way back to the foothill of Mt. Fuji. It was Friday and, when I got there, it was still 4:00 p.m.: office clerks were supposed to to be still working. But the museum was ridiculously crowded. It was simply impossible to appreciate art works under such circumstances. And later I came to know that it was the least crowded day in the exhibition period – people had had to wait for hours to enter the museum after that day. I had a similar experience in Kyoto when I visited the Kyoto National Museum to see their special exhibition for traditional paintings by the Kano-School painters in the early Edo period. From those experiences, I came to a conclusion that, in Japan, you should avoid special exhibitions held in big cities because they are always extensively advertised and, as an inevitable result, are terribly crowded. Instead, look up the collections of each museum on their websites in advance and visit them for their regular displays.

Nikon D800E + AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED

On my way home from the Pola Museum in Hakone, I stopped by at Gotenba to shoot fireflies with Mt. Fuji. We were in the midst of the rainy season. As it had been raining or overcast for a week, I had wondered if I wouldn’t have any chance to take photos of Fuji with fireflies this year. Luckily, I could capture this image before the clouds blocked out the summit.

This place had been known only by a small number of people. I came to know it through a local photographer a couple of years ago. When I arrived there, there had already been four photographers waiting for the sunset, and I thought it was rather crowded. But, to my surprise, more and more photographers came along as time went by and the place was swarming with a couple of dozens of photographers at the end of the day.

This is why I’m reluctant to tell you the exact locations for my photographs when I’m asked. There are simply too many people in Japan, and it is part of the Japanese mentality that everyone wants to take the same photos. Nowadays, some websites provide users with locations for uploaded landscape photographs in the form of GPS data and everyone uploads photos on social media such as Twitter and Instagram: even a place like this can attract too many photographers.

There was a novice photographer who tried to capture fireflies by firing the flash, which was a rather typical mishap under such conditions and was of course utterly nonsensical – you cannot capture their lights using the strobe. He devastated photographs taken by the rest of us. So I had to yell out before anyone else got furious: ‘Could you please stop firing the flash? You are messing up our photos.’ My voice was loud but I tried to keep the tone calm. In my opinion, it is important to use polite language in such a case. If you cry out something like ‘What the fuck are you doing? Stop firing the flash you idiot!’ it will very likely to end up in a furious row. I’ve witnessed some photographers (often old male photographers) uttering something like that and causing commotions.

Mt. Fuji with the Chureito pagoda in spring

As Japan is rapidly ageing, there’re a way too many pensioners who are not working any more. In the good old days, I had been able to exercise my privilege as a freelance and enjoy beautiful landscapes without being bothered by other people. Not anymore. But as I said, everyone wants to shoot at the same place at the same time such as Diamond Fuji from Lake Tanuki or Mt. Fuji with cherry blossoms and the Chureito five-story pagoda in spring. Many of my acquaintances take photos of Mt. Fuji and my stream on Facebook is flooded with the same scenes taken by different people. To put it the other way round, it is still possible to take beautiful photos of Mt. Fuji without being jostled about, if you avoid such popular places at the most attractive time. Alternatively, you can go to remote places that require hours of hiking to access such as the Southern Alps.

Mt. Fuji over the Kofu basin taken from Mt. Houou in the Southern Alps.

The ageing population of Japan, combined with the declining birth rate, is supposed to be a fatal issue. But do we really need more people in this small archipelago? 127 million people are living in a country smaller than California. The population of Japan exceeded 100 million in 1966—50 years ago. Until then, it had never exceeded 100 million. In fact it hadn’t exceeded 35 million until the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century. The country is overpopulated, and too much population is destroying the country’s nature. Many people assume continuous economical growth is necessary. But what will be waiting for the entire human race after more years of continuous growth? Destruction of nature, famine, expanded economic discrepancy leading to aristocracy or fascism. To me, it does look like a balloon being inflated until it bursts. I can only imagine dystopian futures as long as the human race continues this.

Apart from the declining population, of course, the unbalanced demographics are also an issue. One thing I don’t understand is the policy regarding Euthanasia or ‘death with dignity’. Both my parents died of pancreas cancer and both came to know the fact that they had the cancer at stage four, which meant too late to cure. My mum pleaded the doctor to kill her when the pain became unbearable. She knew it was incurable from her experience with my father’s death, and thought it was pointless to just prolong her life in agony knowing that she would never restore acceptable QoL. But, of course, the doctor could not kill her since he would get arrested. The patient wanted to die. Her family also wished peaceful, painless death. The doctor also wished to assist if he could. But we could do nothing. As a result, she lived for a month since she had started to plead for death. What’s the point to add an extra month of agony to the end of her life? The great part of the cost needed for that agonising extra month was paid by the National Health Insurance, for which financially-challenged younger generations have to pay their insurance fees every month. Shortage of physicians is another social issue in Japan in addition to the overwork of nurses, and they’re working hard to extend the life of patients who don’t want to live any longer.

Death is inevitable. It will surely come to me one day. When I’m unable to do anything creative, I’d like to die quietly and calmly. If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. You don’t have to. But how can you impose your belief on others who don’t share the same belief with you and want to control how their own lives end? Our lives are not yours.

By the way, the day I took those photos was my 45th birthday. Many thanks to those who congratulated me.

Listening to audiobooks has been one of my favourite activities for nearly a decade. It is a great pleasure to gain knowledge while driving, walking, jogging, cocking, and ironing shirts like a character in a novel by Haruki Murakami. Lately I started listening to audiobooks while shooting landscape photographs. Because you often need to wait for the right moment when shooting landscapes, there’s nothing left to do until you press the shutter button after you set up your tripod and camera. So I was listening to the Bhagavad Gita translated into English by Eknath Easwaran while shooting the sunset yesterday.

A brief description for those who are not familiar with the Bhagavad Gita: The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient Indian text which is part of the epic Mahabharata. The Gita is a dialogue between the supreme guru Krishna and his disciple Arjuna, who is facing the duty as a warrior to fight his relatives. In Hinduism, Vishnu descends to Earth in a from of an avatar to restore the world. Krishna is said to be the eighth avatar of Vishunu, Buddha is referred to as the ninth avatar, and the tenth (and last) avatar Kalki is predicted to appear in the future .

Lord Krishna says:

“You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engaged in action, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself — without selfish attachments ,and a like in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.” (2:47-48)

I saw thin clouds over Mt. Fuji and left the house in anticipation of a dramatic sunset. Yes, I went to Lake Yamanaka because I expected a good result. In a strict sense, this action seems to indicate attachment to a good result. But it can also be regarded as part of my dharma (duty).

Nikon D800E + AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR

As a photographer, I should try my best to take good photographs making full use of my knowledge and skills. But, once I make a decision on where and when to shoot, I just take care of things I have control over such as finding the best composition and getting perfect focus and appropriate exposure. Then I detach from the result: “I may capture a beautiful sunset or maybe it will be mediocre. But in either way, I will be content.” How nature changes its appearance is beyond my control, and I shouldn’t worry about things I have no control over.

I’d like to point out the fact that yoga mentioned in the quotation from the Gita doesn’t mean physical exercises. In the West, the physical postures (asanas) of Hatha yoga (one of the branches of yoga) became very popular and now people call such physical exercises yoga. In my opinion, it’s as absurd as calling the act of sitting on a floor zen. In this part of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about Karma yoga, which is is the process of attaining Nirvana in action. The Bhagavad Gita also teaches two other paths to self-realisation (Bhakti yoga and Jnana yoga), but I don’t write about them for now.

This was how far I could apply the knowledge of the Gita to my photography. I’m sure I will gain more insights from this ancient wisdom and apply them to my everyday life as I read (and listen to) it over and over. But I can safely say that it wasn’t too difficult to detach from the fruit of my action in this case since I love nature in any form.

Nikon D810A + AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED

The exposure time of the above shot is 300 seconds and I had to wait for another 300 seconds for noise reduction. So it took 600 seconds (10 minutes) all together. It gets cold in winter in the area and I don’t use my Kindle when the temperature is below the freezing point. But it is getting warmer now. I find Kindle is quite useful when waiting for a very long exposure to finish after sunset or before dawn as it lets you read books in the pitch dark. Perhaps it is also a good idea to meditate while waiting for a very long exposure to finish. But I wouldn’t do it in Yamanakako as this area isn’t that deserted and I may appear too far-out. I meditate in nature when trekking in the backcountry.

I’ve used a Gitzo G1228MK2 Mountaineer tripod for mountaineering and travel. Although it is a good portable tripod, I’d always wanted to reduce the weight of my backpack. Gitzo just renewed their Traveler Series tripods. The latest models seem to have some great advantages over their predecessors:

1) By adopting the Carbon eXact technology, the final leg of the new traveler tripod is 22.5% thicker than its predecessor, and thereby providing better stability

2) Provides near eye-level shooting without extending the centre column.

A Sunway Foto levelling base is installed in the tripod. The height of the car in the pic is 1665mm. If your height doesn’t exceed 6 feet, you don’t feel the viewfinder is too low.

3) Although it provides better stability, the weight remained nearly the same (1.34kg/2.9lb)

4) The folded length is 44.5cm (17.5″) also remained nearly the same, and so it can be carried in the hand luggage.

The tripod comes with two centre columns, one standard column (31cm, 119g) and short column for ground level shooting (8cm, 42g). For me, the standard one is too lengthy but you cannot put on the weight hook to the short one because it has no screw hole. I also noticed that the centre column weight hook was not included in the package, which was rather disappointing. Because the tripod is light-weight, the weight hook can be handy when the wind is strong.

Honestly speaking, I don’t want to carry two centre columns and change them frequently. I ended up purchasing a GS2511KB short centre column (19.5cm), which comes with the weight hook. The ground level shooting isn’t possible in a strict sense but you just need to extend the centre column by 1.5cm to do near-ground level shooting. The weight is slightly lighter (97g) too. I wanted them to include a 18-cm centre column with a weight hook rather than providing too lengthy and too short centre columns, since the short column doesn’t have to be that short. It just shouldn’t touch the ground.

I attached to the tripod a Gitzo GLEVEL2 bubble level and the Benro B00 arca-swiss compatible ballhead, which weighs only 227g and features a separate pan lock function. Because I sometimes take panoramic photographs by stitching multiple shots, the bubble level is necessary. Needless to say, if you can carry a levelling base, it would be much more handy but they usually weigh over 200g. I want to make my setup as lightweight as possible. To perform flawless panorama stitching, the ballhead must rotate on the base and be locked separately. So far I’ve never found any usable ballheads lighter than the Benro B00. For example, an RRS BH-30 Pro with B2-mAS clamp weighs 280g and Markins Q3iTRQ-BK weighs 380g.

I went on a day trip to the Nagano prefecture and visited many places yesterday. I usually visit one place to take a special landscape photograph. At times, I stay at the same place for a couple of days. But sometimes I want to take photographs in a more casual way and so I took a lot of hand-held snapshots this time.Continue reading →

Many photographers with a big budget buy the so-called trinity, that is f/2.8 constant aperture wide, standard and telephoto zoom lenses. Why? Because it is the common knowledge that is the way to go for any serious photographer. But my ‘go-to’ standard zoom lens is a f/4 constant aperture zoom lens, SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM | Art, although I can afford more pricey standard zooms. I’ve taken tens of thousands of shots with this lens . Let me explain why I prefer this lens.